Experts Hail New Source Of Research Funds

Prominent educationalists from
both New Zealand and overseas have welcomed the advent of a
new grant-making trust, designed to fund education research
in this country.

The Multi Serve Education Research Trust,
to be officially launched in Wellington on 20th February
2006, is the brainchild of Multi Serve, a leading supplier
of consulting and other services to schools in New
Zealand.

The trust is expected to become one of New
Zealand’s most significant non-governmental sources of
funding for educational research. It is described as “very
important in terms of potential research outcomes,” by
Professor Russell Bishop, Professor of Maori Education at
the University of Waikato’s School of Education, who is also
one of the new entity’s trustees.

“More education research
funding is certainly needed if we are to reduce the
disparities not merely between high achievers and low
achievers in our school system but between the ‘haves’ and
‘have nots’ in our society as a whole.

“I envisage the
trust working in a responsive way with the education
research community in reaching decisions on funding, while
also encouraging closer interaction between researchers,
teachers and policy makers. There is certainly a need for
more dialogue of this type,” he says.

Similar enthusiasm
concerning the trust is expressed by Jan Robertson,
Associate Professor in Professional Studies in Education and
Director of the Educational Leadership Centre at Waikato
University.

“There’s always a need for more money for
educational research. The new trust is also to be welcomed
because it will be independent of government and other
funding bodies. This will enable it to push the boundaries
and put money into new and potentially fruitful research
areas, including, perhaps, longer term projects.

“A vital
focus for research funding must be helping under-achievers
to do better. International comparisons show New Zealand’s
education system performing to a very high standard. This
research fund, in conjunction with others, will enable
collaborative and creative research to be carried out,” she
says.

The global significance of New Zealand educational
research is stressed by Professor Louise Stoll, an education
consultant and Visiting Professor at the Institute of
Education, University of London, as well as at the
University of Bath.

“New Zealand’s educational reforms in
the late nineteen-eighties and early nineteen-nineties
placed the country in the forefront of change. There is
great interest in New Zealand’s successes, but in England we
share with New Zealand the difficulty of reducing the long
‘tail’ of under-achievers. This makes New Zealand research
findings of great and immediate interest to us.

“We live
in an increasingly interconnected world, in which we can and
must learn from each other. We can only benefit from the
fact that additional funding will now be available for
educational research in New Zealand,” she says.

The
relevance overseas of New Zealand research is also
emphasised by Dr Lorna Earl, Director of Aporia Consulting
Ltd and a recently retired Associate Professor at the
Ontario Institute of Studies in Education.

“We share so
many issues in all our counties. It’s important to learn
from each others’ experience, albeit that we also have to be
sensitive to context and understand that what works in one
place may not work so well somewhere else.

“A problem we
all confront is that it can be difficult to get academic
researchers interested in doing research that has real
relevance to what goes on in school. The new trust has an
important role to play in bringing research into closer
alignment with the real needs of schools and the students
they educate,” says Dr Earl.

Professor Stoll and Dr Earl
will both be joining Professor Bishop and Associate
Professor Robertson in facilitating a series of Educational
Research Seminars, organised by Multi Serve in connection
with the launch of the new trust

The seminars are
to be held in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland
respectively on the 21st, 23rd and 24th February.
Participants, including policy makers, researchers and
practitioners will join together in exploring the role of
‘Professional Learning Communities’ in enhancing pupils’
learning.

“It’s vital to bring people from these different
backgrounds together because research tends to be more often
used when teachers and policy makers feel that they’ve had
some part in deciding priorities,” says Professor Stoll,
adding that the seminars may also provide a stimulus for
discussions over the type of projects to be funded by the
new trust. Multi Serve has charitable status and the net
surplus arising from its activities is used to benefit New
Zealand’s schools and the young people educated by them.

“The new trust will be one of the primary means whereby
we honour this commitment in the years ahead,” says the
trust’s executive director, Mary Sinclair.

“We are
delighted to be able to bring so distinguished a team of
facilitators together from both New Zealand and overseas.
It’s unprecedented for education seminars in New Zealand to
enjoy the input of so strong a line-up of contributors,
while concentrating on a single important theme,” she says.

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